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This paper aims to provide a framework for the airlines to forecast demand, specifically on international routes operated from major metros of the USA and position their services by designing the service positioning matrix. Major benefits include route contemplation, effective fleet scheduling, decisions on aircraft and fuel purchases and developing optimal fare policies. Much effort has been directed to developing forecasts of air transport demand, particularly by airline companies and professional bodies in the air transport industry. However, detailed analysis of the characteristics of demand for air transport over long-haul or international routes is less researched.

Major methodologies used were regression, time series analysis – Holts’ exponential smoothing method. Two econometric models are formulated that capture the direct and indirect drivers of airline demand in the Indian context. Forecasts of demand are made over the next seven years until 2020.

It is interesting to find that demand not only is influenced by direct parameters such as population- and behavior-oriented parameters such as income, but the macroeconomic environment of the country concerned also plays a major role in demand origination. Variables like investment, gross domestic product, etc. contribute a lot in terms of international airline demand. It is also expected that in the Indian context, demand is on a spike path over the next seven years considering the macroeconomic environment and other general economic conditions.

This paper is developed and applied in the Indian context. Results may change when applied to different countries depending on their macroeconomic conditions.

This study will be useful for any airline in route planning, and in formulating major policy decisions. Other benefits include effective fleet scheduling, decisions on aircraft and fuel purchases and developing optimal fare policies.

This paper adds to the existing literature by developing two demand drivers’ models in the Indian context. It is first such attempt to analyse the Indian aviation industry ever since the Indian economic liberalization in 1991. Forecasts provided yield major benefits for airlines operating to and from India.

A substantial part of airports’ revenues relates to charges covering the costs of services supplied by the airport. Charges are imposed on carriers, which in turn pass them or a percentage of them, on to passengers. In the present chapter, special attention is given to regional airports characterized by low traffic volumes, enabling only one or a few carriers to serve each destination. A classic economic model is presented to analyze how the pass-on rate depends on supply and demand characteristics and market structure. Some illustrative examples assuming combinations of common specifications for market characteristics are also presented, showing pass-on rates ranging from 50% to more than 100%. Consequently, market structure and characteristics of carriers and passengers are decisive for how passengers experience changes in airport charges. The differences between the optimal charge from the perspectives of the airport and the welfare of society are specifically addressed. It is demonstrated that knowledge of the pass-on rate in the monopoly cases may be sufficient to infer how the mark-up will be affected by a change in marginal costs. Consequently, the understanding of the pass-on rate is relevant for airport owners and for decision-makers when considering the welfare of passengers and other politically stated goals.

Airline travel is composed of business and nonbusiness travelers, each with different preferences that give rise to differences in demand elasticities and substitution not only across airlines but also airports. In this study, we develop and estimate a model of airline wherein consumers choose which airports and airline to use that allows for unobserved differences between travelers (e.g., business and nonbusiness travelers). The results point to the role that airports themselves play in the ultimate selection of a flight, and that there are strong interactive effects between the airlines’ networks and the consumers’ preferences across airports.

With the liberalization of air transport and the enlargement of air traffic, airports face insistent requests from airlines to perform and improve both service quality and cost efficiency. As a result, airport ownership, governance, and regulations are debated and sometimes have already been changed. Airport pricing under different governance structure is a central issue in this context.

This chapter estimates the demand for flights in an international air travel market using a unique dataset with detailed information not only on flight choices but also on contemporaneous prices and characteristics of all the alternative non-booked flights. The estimation strategy employs a simple discrete choice random utility model that we use to analyze how choices and its response to prices depend on the departing airport, the identity of the carrier, and the departure date and time. The results show that a 10% increase in prices in a 100-seat aircraft throughout a 100-period selling season decreases quantity demanded by 7.7 seats. We also find that the quantity demanded is more responsive to prices for Delta and American, during morning and evening flights and that the response to prices changes significantly over different departure dates.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first to carry out a comprehensive literature review for state of the art regarding airline schedule planning and second to identify some new research directions that might help academic researchers and practitioners.

The authors mainly focus on the research work appeared in the last three decades. The search process was conducted in database searches using four keywords: “Flight scheduling,” “Fleet assignment,” “Aircraft maintenance routing” (AMR), and “Crew scheduling”. Moreover, the combination of the keywords was used to find the integrated models. Any duplications due to database variety and the articles that were written in non-English language were discarded.

The authors studied 106 research papers and categorized them into five categories. In addition, according to the model features, subcategories were further identified. Moreover, after discussing up-to-date research work, the authors suggested some future directions in order to contribute to the existing literature.

The presented categories and subcategories were based on the model characteristics rather than the model formulation and solution methodology that are commonly used in the literature. One advantage of this classification is that it might help scholars to deeply understand the main variation between the models. On the other hand, identifying future research opportunities should help academic researchers and practitioners to develop new models and improve the performance of the existing models.

This study proposed some considerations in order to enhance the efficiency of the schedule planning process practically, for example, using the dynamic Stackelberg game strategy for market competition in flight scheduling, considering re-fleeting mechanism under heterogeneous fleet for fleet assignment, and considering the stochastic departure and arrival times for AMR.

In the literature, all the review papers focused only on one category of the five categories. Then, this category was classified according to the model formulation and solution methodology. However, in this work, the authors attempted to propose a comprehensive review for all categories for the first time and develop new classifications for each category. The proposed classifications are hence novel and significant.

This chapter reviews three main issues in the interactions between air transport and high-speed rail (HSR) in China, namely the interaction between low-cost carriers (LCCs) and HSR, HSR speed effect on airlines, and airline–HSR integration. Studies on these three aspects of airline–HSR interactions have yet been well reviewed, and our chapter aims to fill in this gap. In this chapter, we comprehensively survey literature on the topics, especially studies on Chinese markets that have recently witnessed major HSR developments (and have planned further large-scale HSR expansion in the coming years). Our review shows that, first, compared to full-service carriers, LCCs face fiercer competition from HSR. However, the expansion of HSR network in China can be better coordinated with LCC development. Second, HSR speed exerts two countervailing effects on airline demand and price (the “travel-time” effect and “safety” effect, respectively). Specifically, an HSR speed reduction can have a positive effect on airlines due to longer HSR travel time, but a negative effect on airlines due to improved perception on HSR safety. Third, airline–HSR integration can be implemented through cooperation between airlines and HSR operators and through co-location of airports and HSR stations and can have important implications for intermodal transport and social welfare.

With significant changes in the aviation industry, various airport–airline arrangements have been formed to achieve alternative objectives. However, no consensus has been reached on such arrangements’ economic effects and the associated optimal public policy. This chapter aims to provide an interpretive review of the common types of airport–airline arrangements, the different modeling approaches used and key conclusions reached by recent studies. Our review suggests that airport–airline arrangements can take diverse forms and have been widely used in the industry. They may allow the airport and its airlines to internalize demand externality, increase traffic volume, reduce airport investment risks and costs, promote capacity investment, enhance service quality, or simply are a response to the competition from other airport–airline chains. On the other hand, such vertical arrangements, especially for those exclusively between airports and selected airlines, could lead to collusive outcomes at the expenses of non-participating organizations. The effects of such arrangements are also significantly influenced by the contract type, market structure and bargaining power between the airport and airline sectors. While case by case investigations are often needed for important economic decisions, we recommend policy-makers to promote competition in the airline and airport segments whenever possible, and demand more transparency or regulatory reporting of such arrangements. Policy debates and economic studies should be carried out first, before intrusive regulations are introduced.

Deregulation of domestic markets and the liberalization of international markets have dramatically changed air transportation. One of the important results of this change is the environmental effects of air transportation. This study aims to examine the implications of air transportation on environmental sustainability in the context of airline business strategies in liberalized and globalized air transport industry.

The paper discusses the relationship between liberalization, airline strategies and environmental sustainability of air transportation using the related literature. Then, to show some environmental impacts on the axis of the relationship discussed, emission rates for the aircraft landing and take-off phase were calculated on a global basis based on the aircraft traffic.

The discussion in the paper shows that the liberalization policies and the strategies of airlines supported by these policies, in essence, contradict the environmental sustainability of air transport. Considering the flight share projections of EUROCONTROL for different aircraft types on a global basis and the World Bank’s global flight traffic forecast for the years 2016 and 2025, it has been demonstrated that the number of aircraft departures will increase by 30%, whilst the number of aircraft emissions will increase by 41.5%.

Airlines are one of the main actors that will play a role in reducing the environmental impacts of air transportation. Therefore, this study is important in giving an idea to both policymakers and airline managers on how airline companies’ strategies should be shaped to realize both corporate sustainability and environmentally sustainable air transportation.

There are many studies in the literature regarding the environmental effects of air transport. However, there are not many studies linking environmental impacts with airline strategies that directly affect air transport demand. This study is different in that it gives environmental sustainability by associating it with its root causes.

In this chapter, we will review the history, deregulation, policy reforms, and airline consolidations and mergers of the Chinese airline industry. The measurement of airline competition in China’s domestic market will also be discussed. Although air deregulation is still ongoing, the Chinese airline industry has become a market-driven business subject to some mild regulations. Then, we will review the impressive development of the high-speed rail (HSR) network in China and its effects on the domestic civil aviation market. In general, previous studies have found that the introduction of HSR services has a significant negative impact on airfare and air travel demand in China. The rapidly expanding network of HSR has important policy implications for Chinese airlines.